In the San Francisco Chronicle, Esther Mobley looks at how fine wine has become the NBA’s new status symbol. “If that basketball-player stereotype used to involve fancy Tequila and Lamborghinis, with wine it has taken a more cerebral turn in the arena of luxury goods. [Lebron] James, for example, “is a really knowledgeable wine drinker,” says Braiden Albrecht, winemaker at Napa’s Mayacamas…”

Elsewhere in the Chronicle, Esther Mobley delves into the questions about Joe Wagner’s Oregon wine label scandal that nobody is asking. “If Wagner isn’t actually mischaracterizing wherehis grapes came from — if instead, his offense is only that he made his wine in California rather than in Oregon — how is the consumer being harmed?”

In PUNCH, Jon Bonné highlights New York’s Ruffian and explores what makes the wine bar’s wine list so exciting.

In Food & Wine, Sara Schneider gives an overview of three wine clubs that make great holiday gifts.

Eric Asimov offers notes for the most recent wine school, on California carignan, and announces what’s up next: tawny port. “Both sherry and Madeira, the other two leading fortified wines, have had some semblance of a revival. But port? Not so much.”